Lewiston, Maine
October 25, 2023
FEMALE DISPATCHER [on radio]:
Please respond to the town of Lewiston for an active shooter incident. Multiple people down.
NARRATOR:
The bowling alley was the shooter’s first stop. Forty-five seconds. Eighteen shots. Eight people dead. Three wounded. He got in his car and headed south 4 miles. Schemengees Bar and Grille.
DESTINY JOHNSON, Survivor:
So I was facing the shooter and Jennifer right in front of me, and that's when he walked in, shot the guy at the bar, and then I guess the other couple people playing pool. And then towards us, which hit Jennifer in the shoulder. So it was about 20 feet away from us when he walked in.
NARRATOR:
In the bar, a group of friends who are deaf and hard of hearing—regulars who play cornhole together, including Megan Vozzella’s husband, Steve.
MEGAN VOZZELLA:
[Using ASL] Even though they're deaf, it doesn't matter. They could feel the vibrations of the gunshots, extremely loud. Friends told me it was very graphic, very raw. Those guns are large military guns with enormous bullets, so when the gunshots rang out, it's an extremely loud vibration that you can feel to the core.
DESTINY JOHNSON:
He shot three times. And then I heard someone say, "Get down." And then we all got down. And then after that, it was just—I crawled. Every time he shot, I stopped crawling. We saw the kitchen door open, and we booked it out the door.
NARRATOR:
It was over in 78 seconds. Thirty-six shots. Ten more dead. Ten more wounded.
The shooter disappeared into the night.
POLICE RADIO CHATTER:
Both rigs at Schemengees, multiple victims.
Any other available transporting units to Schemengees.
—out of Lewiston for active shooter incident, all available units.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
A mass casualty event playing out in Lewiston, Maine.
MALE REPORTER:
Multiple, multiple fatalities.
MALE NEWSREADER:
They are still looking for that shooter. He's considered armed and extremely dangerous.
FEMALE FIRST RESPONDER:
I suggest that you go. We have an active shooter and we’re not sure where he’s at as of this moment, OK?
NARRATOR:
Maine State Police issued a shelter-in-place order around the city of Lewiston.
FEMALE NEWSREADER:
They are telling people to stay inside their homes, to lock their doors.
NARRATOR:
They were looking for 40-year-old Robert Card, a trained marksman and grenade instructor in the Army Reserve.
GOV. JANET MILLS (D):
People should not approach him under any circumstances.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The manhunt at this hour now involving more than 350 law enforcement personnel from multiple states and from federal agencies.
NARRATOR:
It would take two days before he was found.
MALE NEWSREADER:
The suspect shooter here in Maine has been found dead. Robert Card reportedly now found dead.
NARRATOR:
Eighteen people were killed. Two women, 15 men. A father and his teenage son. A married couple in their 70s. Four deaf friends.
It was among the country's deadliest mass shootings, the highest death toll ever in the state of Maine. Particularly devastating for the deaf community.
MEGAN VOZZELLA:
[Using ASL] Before Steve left the house that Wednesday morning, October 25th, he said, "I love you," and kissed me goodbye and gave Bella a kiss good morning, because she was getting ready for school. He gave her a kiss goodbye and he left. And that was the last conversation we had.
SUSAN SHARON, Maine Public Radio:
Even though we as Americans know this can happen anywhere, when it happens in the place you love and to the people who know each other, it's a gut punch.
NARRATOR:
For more than a year, journalists from Maine Public Radio and the Portland Press Herald, along with FRONTLINE, have been investigating the events leading up to the massacre in Lewiston, combing through documents, listening to testimony and conducting dozens of interviews.
SUSAN SHARON:
Everyone has a different way of processing their grief and trauma.
JOHN TERHUNE, Portland Press Herald:
It became clear days after the shooting that there were breakdowns on a whole lot of levels.
Really trying to understand the system here—
It wasn't one mistake. It wasn't one person. Wasn't one institution.
—two different hospitals involved—
JULIA ARENSTAM, Portland Press Herald:
People had known the danger that he posed to the community. People had known the mental health crises that he was experiencing. People had tried to get help from law enforcement, from mental health providers, from Army officials. It was so glaringly apparent that there were missed warning signs.
STEVE MISTLER, Maine Public Radio:
There are countless instances where if things were done a little bit differently, this may not have happened.
JOHN TERHUNE:
For months after the shooting, we were trying to get a sense of who Robert Card was leading up to this, because to us, that was a key piece of the puzzle in terms of figuring out what happened.
NARRATOR:
Card spent most of his life in the small Maine town of Bowdoin, where his family had lived for generations. He was a sergeant first class in the Army Reserve, training cadets on grenades and heavy weapons. And that’s where he first met his friend Sean Hodgson.
SEAN HODGSON, Robert Card's friend:
Great guy. You can always rely on him. A guy would hand you money out of his own pocket and really didn't care if you paid him back or not.
I lost my place to live, I got evicted. And I called Robert Card, and, unexpectedly, he told me to get my butt up here. And he helped me out. Gave me a place to live till I got back on my feet.
JOHN TERHUNE:
Sean Hodgson was Robert Card's best friend. He was also a delivery driver for the same company, and they would often spend their nights as they are driving their trucks on speakerphone with one another, just kind of passing the time, chatting. There was a real trust there.
SEAN HODGSON:
Once we got our schedules aligned we started going bowling on our days off. Just-in-Time bowling alley.
NARRATOR:
The two men supported each other through difficult times in their lives.
SUSAN SHARON:
Sean was deployed to Afghanistan. He describes that he was having very serious PTSD from that experience, and he started getting into trouble.
JOHN TERHUNE:
Sean Hodgson was, in some ways, a troubled person. Has troubles with alcohol. He has been in trouble within his Army Reserve unit for some behaviors while he was on duty.
NARRATOR:
It was Sean Hodgson who was one of the first to notice—and report—changes in Robert Card’s behavior.
SEAN HODGSON:
He would call me and vent. I listened to him. I listened to all his rants—all the good stuff, all the bad stuff, so—I don't know why. He believed people were alienating him, and it wasn't the case. It was with him increasingly getting worse, thinking people were talking about him, including his own family. He was thinking people were calling him a pedophile. It hurt his feelings, bad, and it struck him in the heart. Because he does love kids. He's got his own son.
NARRATOR:
In the spring of 2023, Card’s ex-wife, Cara Lamb, got an urgent message from their teenage son, Colby.
CARA LAMB, Robert Card’s former wife:
He said he didn't want to go to his dad's anymore. That he didn't feel safe. You know, his dad basically was telling Colby, as they’re in a big box store, Lowe's or Home Depot or somewhere like that, they're over here on aisle one, and Rob is absolutely convinced that he can hear what these two 90-year-old little mom-and-pop couple that are 4 feet tall are saying very specific things about Rob, and that he can hear them that far away. That he was a pedophile. That he was gay. His dad was very, very adamant that he heard this, and if you didn't believe that he heard it, you were in on it. You were against him. He was afraid his dad was getting violent and getting so aggressive that he was going to be physically violent.
NARRATOR:
And there was another concern: Colby said his father was amassing guns.
CARA LAMB:
I asked him how many guns that was, and he said, "I don't know. Could be 10, 15."
I was incredibly concerned that calling the police and having them show up in his driveway, I didn't want it to come back on Colby, and I said "Listen, let’s go talk to the school resource officer and ask ‘What do we do? What can we do in this scenario?'’’ Because if this comes from us, Rob is going to take it out on Colby.
NARRATOR:
Colby’s school resource officer called in Deputy Chad Carleton from the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office.
CARA LAMB:
Well, he said to us there's only so much you can do in this situation. Your hands are kind of tied, because he hasn't actually pointed a gun at Colby or myself. He hasn't actually said, "I am going to go shoot a bunch of people at this place."
NARRATOR:
Deputy Carleton was among the first from law enforcement alerted to the concerns about Robert Card.
He later issued a report that cautioned other officers that Card was exhibiting "paranoid behavior" and had "10 to 15 firearms."
Deputy Carleton testified before a state commission established to investigate the shootings.
FEMALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
Based upon the information that they gave you, did you believe that Robert Card was mentally ill or suffering from some sort of a mental health crisis?
DEPUTY CHAD CARLETON:
Yes, I did.
FEMALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
And did you understand that he had access to many firearms?
CHAD CARLETON:
Yes, I did.
Commission testimony
FEMALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
Did you believe that he presented a likelihood of serious harm?
CHAD CARLETON:
Not at that time.
STEVE MISTLER:
That line of questioning is designed to find out whether Deputy Carleton could use Maine's yellow flag law, which is used by police officers to begin the process of confiscating somebody's weapons if they’re a harm to themselves or others.
NARRATOR:
Unlike red flag laws in 21 other states and Washington, D.C., Maine’s unique yellow flag law is a multistep process that includes a mental health evaluation.
STEVE MISTLER:
The first step is the police have to make a determination of dangerousness. The second one, they have to take that person into protective custody. While the person is in protective custody, then they have to be presented before a mental health professional to make a determination whether that person is dangerous. And then after that, the case of the petition is brought to a judge, who then adjudicates the claim to determine whether or not the person's firearms need to be taken.
Yellow flag suggests caution, deliberation, and that's intentional. That's why advocates for the law wanted to demonstrate that weapons or guns would not be taken arbitrarily or without great care.
In Maine, police have a decision to make, just as Deputy Carlton did, whether or not he was going to pursue that angle or not.
Commission testimony
CHAD CARLETON:
Protective custody requires someone to be in front of you. It requires access to a person to make that happen. . . . I was being told that access to the person was a bad idea. . . . I thought the best course of action was going to be to work with the family and with the Army to get him to the help he needed to set him on a better course in life.
NARRATOR:
Deputy Carlton reached out to one of Card’s superiors in the Army Reserve, 1st Sgt. Kelvin Mote, who recommended Card be taken to the hospital and said they’d talk to him.
Commission testimony
1ST SGT. KELVIN MOTE, U.S. Army Reserve:
To talk with him and see if those, the conditions manifested themselves with us. You know, "Why are you—What are you hearing? Where you hearing it?" That sort of thing that was going to be the plan. . . .
FEMALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
Did you have any conversations with Robert Card between May 4 and June 2?
KELVIN MOTE:
I did not, no.
JOHN TERHUNE:
Nobody from the Army ever confronts Card about this stuff in May or in any drill for the next several months. The buck has been passed from Sagadahoc over to the Army, but then nothing happens from there.
NARRATOR:
Deputy Carlton also heard additional concerns about Card’s behavior from his family.
Commission testimony
MALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
Is it correct that when you went there to meet with him, he met you at the door holding a gun in his hand?
NICOLE HERLING, Robert Card’s sister:
Yes, he had.
MALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
And that was that very disturbing behavior to you?
NICOLE HERLING:
To me, yes, because I do not associate with guns. . . . So when we knocked on the door, he had the gun in his hand up against the wall, like this, I believe. And then once he saw it was me, he kicked the door open and then held it behind his back and moved it around his body as he walked to the bedroom. Went to the bedroom, probably put it away and then came back and just kind of kicked back in the chair.
MALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
But even after that disturbing beginning, did you and Ryan have a productive conversation with him?
NICOLE HERLING:
Yeah. I mean, it was a really good—I mean, we laughed. We cried. . . .
MALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
But your brother agreed that he would start some kind of program, when you talked to him?
NICOLE HERLING:
Yeah. So we really tried to help him understand, without putting him under attack, that he may have a problem. And Robby just kept saying, "I'm not effing crazy. I'm not crazy. The stuff is really happening."
NARRATOR:
In the weeks that followed, Card’s condition deteriorated, and his family grew increasingly worried.
NICOLE HERLING:
He felt like everybody was against him, and that the more that he would tell people what was happening, that we would respond in a way that didn't believe him. And he felt really alone and isolated. I think that he was really experiencing hell on earth.
NARRATOR:
She said she tried repeatedly to get help from the military.
NICOLE HERLING:
I was trying to learn how the whole system works, because I had no idea. We were trying to figure out who the commanding officer was. We tried calling the Saco base. It was the weekend, and I pressed every single button—I think there was like an option of five. And I believe that I left a message for the military police. "I am a sister of one of your unit members. I have concerns and I need your help."
SUSAN SHARON:
Not a single person called her back. She couldn't find up-to-date information about where to turn. No one informed her about the Army's psychological program to help her brother. She was just left with nothing.
NARRATOR:
Two months after the sheriff’s office and Army Reserve were alerted to Card’s condition, his unit made its annual training trip to West Point. Almost immediately, he tried to fight another reservist, then locked himself in his room.
JOHN TERHUNE:
Next morning, Card refuses to answer the door again. Soldiers huddle up and they decide, "We got to get the police involved, because this is somebody who might be in crisis." They call the New York State Police.
Body cam excerpts
NARRATOR:
Body cam footage shows the state police arriving. 1st Sgt. Mote and other reservists explained the situation to the troopers.
KELVIN MOTE:
Our concern is that he's either going to hurt himself or someone else. . . . He needs to be evaluated. He needs to talk to a medical professional. . . .
STAFF SGT. DARYL REED, U.S. Army Reserve:
He's, like, hearing voices. Like, it's like paranoia to the nth degree. Like, it's weird. It’s really weird. . . .
STAFF SG MATTHEW NOYES, U.S. Army Reserve:
The more concerning part is he was never like this.
DARYL REED:
Never. And he's a he's a gun nut, too. He has a lot of guns. He just spent 14 grand on a scope, too, so he's like—he's got—I don't know. I don't know what he's capable of, and I'm not insinuating anything, but I'm just saying he does have a ton of guns, so.
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
. . . Robert? Robert, this is Trooper Katz from the state police. Can you open the door for me, please? Thank you, my man. You want to throw a shirt on, I'll come in and talk to you. . . . So what's going on that your staff is calling, concerned about you?
ROBERT CARD:
What’s up?
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
What's going on that your staff is concerned about you, calling us?
ROBERT CARD:
Because I flipped out on someone messing around with me and they're cowards and ran away. I didn't do anything wrong. I haven't been physical with anyone.
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
Yeah, no one’s alleging that. . . . What was it that caused the issue last night?
ROBERT CARD:
They keep saying s--- behind my back. I confront them, and they pretend like I'm hearing stuff. . . .
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
I mean, does it make sense that someone that you’ve been good friends with for over a decade would all of a sudden just start saying these things about you?
ROBERT CARD:
It’s happening everywhere, so yeah. It's making a lot of sense.
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
What do you mean by that? What do you mean by that, “It’s happening everywhere”?
ROBERT CARD:
At work. I had to quit my job, go to a different place to try to leave it, and then it's there, as well. So.
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
What were they saying at work?
ROBERT CARD:
Huh?
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
What kind of stuff were they saying?
ROBERT CARD:
I'm gay. I’m a pedophile. I like little boys. I like little girls. . . .
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
The staff here is concerned about you, to the point that they have command directed you to talk with a counselor. . . . OK? So that would take place over at Keller at West Point. . . . Are you willing to do that? Would you be willing to talk with someone?
ROBERT CARD:
I have to have it's command directive, obviously.
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
OK. Well, I mean, are—When I say—
ROBERT CARD:
Is it going to help anything? No.
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
I don't know.
ROBERT CARD:
I would rather have people stop talking and stop looking at me. I’m a f------ private person that don't like f------ my s--- out there. . . .
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
I hope you understand that they're concerned enough about your welfare that they called us.
ROBERT CARD:
Oh, because they're scared. Because I'm going to frigging do something, because I am capable.
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
Like, what do you mean by that?
ROBERT CARD:
Huh?
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
What do you mean by that?
ROBERT CARD:
Nothing. No.
NEW YORK STATE POLICE TROOPER:
OK.
All right, Robert, you’re going to go in this vehicle here.
JOHN TERHUNE:
Robert Card being taken to the hospital is a key moment in this story. It is the moment that so many people in his life have been waiting and hoping for.
NARRATOR:
Card is taken to Keller Army Hospital, where he’s diagnosed with “unspecified psychosis.” He’s transferred to Four Winds, a civilian hospital nearby, for a higher level of care.
JOHN TERHUNE:
Card undergoes testing at Four Winds Hospital, and the clinicians uncover some troubling things. First and foremost, Card talks about having a hit list, and he thinks about adding people that have aggrieved him to this hit list. He's diagnosed with psychosis. He is put on antipsychotic medication.
Card, meanwhile, is on the phone constantly with his best friend, Shawn Hodgson, and he is talking about just how he's furious to be there. And he uses the phrase “playing the game.” Basically, “I'm going to make these doctors think that I'm doing better so they will let me out of the hospital."
NARRATOR:
In closed testimony, a Four Winds psychiatrist told the state commission that Card had shown progress, agreed to take his medications and participate in therapy. After 19 days, Card was deemed safe to be released. He asked Sean Hodgson to pick him up.
FEMALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
And did Robert talk during that time?
SEAN HODGSON:
Yes.
FEMALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
About what?
Commission testimony
SEAN HODGSON:
His stay at the hospital. How he flipped up his mattress. Punched it till his knuckles bled. . . . Just reiterating stuff that he's already told me over the phone, just over and over again. I tried to get him to talk about other stuff.
JOHN TERHUNE:
While Card was in the hospital, doctors were in contact with his mother. The rest of the family now sees this as a really tragic moment, because Robert Card's mother has her own health problems, and she is really in no position to be the person who is going to be keeping track of or managing Robert's care.
FEMALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
Did he mention any obligation to take medications or follow up with a therapist?
SEAN HODGSON:
Yes. He was supposed to follow up with New York, telephone and video. The medications he was still taking, he took them I'm guessing a couple of weeks after, because he was complaining that it was slowing him down at work. It was making him feel lazy. . . . So he stopped taking them. . . . They didn't have a facility down here to give him counseling. They were trying to do video chat with him, and he would pretty much tell them—He would answer the phone and tell them, "No, I'm not doing it," and hang up on them. . . . He was increasingly getting worse and more and more angry every day.
NARRATOR:
No one from Four Winds or Keller Army Hospital would agree to an interview.
But a Keller Hospital nurse testified he had told Army Reserve Capt. Jeremy Reamer that Card was unfit for duty, and recommended they take steps to remove his weapons, check in regularly and ensure he attended his appointments.
FEMALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
And was it your job to ensure that Card follow through with the mental health treatment that he had been ordered to comply with by the Army?
Commission testimony
CAPT. JEREMY REAMER, U.S. Army Reserve:
Was to supervise him to and follow up with that, yes.
FEMALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
That was your job?
JEREMY REAMER:
Part of my job, yes.
FEMALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
Did you do that?
JEREMY REAMER:
[Pause] I personally did not follow up with him regarding that.
NARRATOR:
Capt. Reamer wouldn’t agree to an interview, nor would anyone else in the Army. But in their own investigation, the Army acknowledged missteps in communication and follow-up—areas they said they have since improved.
But they also criticized police and medical personnel and stressed that they only have limited authority over reservists.
JEREMY REAMER:
As a Army reservist, after being released and in between battle assemblies . . . everyone is essentially back to civilians. That I can't order someone to go to Sgt. Card’s house and stay with them, with him. . . . Especially with certain things like firearms, having no jurisdiction or authority over his personally owned firearms.
NARRATOR:
Instead, Capt. Reamer testified he was in touch with Sean Hodgson, who was asking the family for help.
JEREMY REAMER:
The plan was to have the family remove the weapons.
MALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
Explain the plan.
JEREMY REAMER:
From my understanding, from speaking with Staff Sgt. Hodgson, he had coordinated, after speaking with Card in the hospital. . . . My understanding was that, the agreement—you know, that an agreement was made and that the family agreed to remove the weapons from the home.
MALE STATE COMMISSIONER:
But you're not sure who in the family?
JEREMY REAMER:
I cannot recall exactly who.
JOHN TERHUNE:
What we know is that these guns were not secured upon Robert's release from the hospital. It never ended up happening.
NARRATOR:
Two days after his discharge from Four Winds, Card tried to pick up a silencer for one of his guns. But the store had to turn him away because he checked a box on a federal form indicating he’d been committed to a hospital for mental illness.
JOHN TERHUNE:
It's not supposed to trigger any phone call to the local police. "Hey, this guy's not supposed to have guns." All it is supposed to do is what it did, which was flag it for the gun seller and stop the sale. And there's no check on whether you've got a stockpile of 20 guns back at your house, as lots of people do here in Maine.
SUSAN SHARON:
This is a state where there's a high rate of gun ownership. And gun ownership is just sort of part of the background of Maine culture. It comes from the hunting tradition that Maine has. There's also a high rate of service in the military by people in Maine. So when it comes to thinking about separating a person from their guns, that is not the go-to idea for a law enforcement officer in Maine.
JULIA ARENSTAM:
And so if you're a deputy who has spent 20 years patrolling those areas, your first inclination is not to be like, "We need to remove all of his weapons from his house." It's "OK, well, let's talk to his family and see if we can solve things that way. Let's start there."
NARRATOR:
By September, Card was increasingly isolated, having pushed away most of his family and friends—with the exception of Sean Hodgson.
JOHN TERHUNE:
On a weeknight mid-September, Card and Hodgson go to the casino. Have a nice evening, according to Hodgson. But then on the ride back, Card starts up with his usual routine.
Hodgson's commission testimony
SEAN HODGSON:
He started flipping out, punching the steering wheel. He was saying that they ruined his life. Reiterated what they were calling him. Just flipping out. Some of the stuff I couldn't make out, it was so loud.
I was worried that he was going to kill us in the car because he's driving erratically, and I thought for sure we were going to end up wrapped around a tree. I begged him to pull over, let me drive. He didn't listen. He told me to shut the eff up, shut the eff up, don't say another word. Then he punched me in the face.
I was very hurt that he wanted to push me away. He was all done with me, is pretty much what he said.
I wouldn't even let him drive me all the way back home because if he decided to snap then, there's really no protection for me there. It’s not in plain view of the public. That's why I had him drop me off at the gas station.
Hodgson's commission testimony
SEAN HODGSON:
When I got out of the vehicle, I reiterated, I was like, "Hey, just so you know, I love you. I'll always be there for you. I'll never give up on you." . . . He had that blank stare on his face. He wouldn’t even look at me when I was talking to him. . . . And he slowly drove away.
JOHN TERHUNE:
And it’s essentially the end of their relationship. Hodgson, the last real anchor to Card's old life, is no longer in the picture. And this was about five, six weeks before the shooting in Lewiston.
A couple of days later, just after 2:00 a.m., he texts both Reamer and Mote.
SEAN HODGSON [reading text message]:
You up, I have something to report. Change the passcode to the unit gate and be armed as Sgt. 1st Class Card does arrive. Please. I believe he's messed up in the head and threatened the unit and other places. I love him to death, but I do not know how to help him, and he refuses to get help. And yes, he still has all his weapons. I believe he's going to snap and do a mass shooting.
I left it up to them to decide what the best course of action is. I personally did not want to see Robert Card in trouble. I just wanted him to get help.
JOHN TERHUNE:
The fact that it comes from Sean Hodgson is causing the Army Reserve to be a little bit skeptical. Sean is kind of constantly calling Mote, early hours in the morning, waking him up. People's wives are getting annoyed about this. To talk, to vent, whatever. Sometimes he's been drinking. And so when this text comes in at 2:00 a.m., is it an urgent problem that we have to address? Or is it the late-night rantings of an unreliable reservist?
KELVIN MOTE:
You have to—what is that old saying?—take it with a grain of salt sometimes. But my belief was not—My belief was that this was a credible threat and that he was not only capable of carrying out this threat, but that he conveyed it to Hodgson, and it's in line with everything else that had happened since July.
JOHN TERHUNE:
Mote writes an email detailing the unit's interactions with Robert Card over the last several months. Mote talks about his stay in the hospital. It talks about his erratic behavior and about the recent warnings from Hodgson.
Mote says, months after the shooting, that his intention here was to help the local police enact the state’s yellow flag law. But there’s no mention of yellow flag in the email.
NARRATOR:
That letter would end up at the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office, along with a request for a welfare check on Card.
Sgt. Aaron Skolfield responded to the request.
SGT. AARON SKOLFIELD, Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office:
So the first call that we received was on Sept. 15. That was a Friday afternoon. I was actually covering for another deputy who was on vacation.
[On radio] I'm going to be going to [deleted] West Road to do a welfare check on Robert Card. C-A-R-D.
FEMALE DISPATCHER [on radio]:
OK.
AARON SKOLFIELD: [on radio]
And he's flagged in-house. Known to be armed and dangerous. Blah blah blah.
FEMALE DISPATCHER [on radio]:
All right.
AARON SKOLFIELD:
I went and checked on this mobile home.
[On radio] No vehicles in the driveway. He's not home. Can you leave the screen open? I'm going to type about it.
FEMALE DISPATCHER [on radio]:
10-4.
NARRATOR:
The sheriff’s office issued an alert to law enforcement in the hope of getting an in-person sighting of card.
AARON SKOLFIELD:
I had done everything that was appropriate for that shift and put it out there for other law enforcement to be aware.
Sept. 16. Again, there's only two of us on for the whole county. I drove by Mr. Card’s house, and at that time I was able to see his white Subaru in the driveway, leading me to believe that he’s probably home now. And I opted to have another unit come back me up.
Knocked on the door. Announced. "Come on, Mr. Card, Robert. We just need to talk to you. Just need to check on you." You know, if he was there, fairly certain he knew that we were out there and just wouldn't answer the door.
NARRATOR:
At this point, Skolfield says he felt his hands were tied. He says he was never told the Army wanted to initiate a yellow flag process, and he didn’t feel he had enough yet to go that route.
AARON SKOLFIELD:
He hasn't committed a crime in Sagadahoc County here. There are no arrest warrants out for him. I can't just walk in his house. Had I done that, that creates a whole host of issues that would get me in trouble.
NARRATOR:
Skolfield then made several calls looking for more information, including one to Capt. Reamer.
Voice of: Sgt. Skolfield
AARON SKOLFIELD:
So he doesn't have anything at the house? . . .
Voice of: Capt. Reamer
JEREMY REAMER [on phone]:
So in terms of all the weapons, this is kind of how it went down, as far as I know. There was no real court order to take his weapons or anything like that. . . . I was told his weapons had been moved out into a family member's place.
AARON SKOLFIELD:
OK.
JEREMY REAMER [on phone]:
Whether he has access to those at the [inaudible], I don't know, but that's what—As far as I know, any weapons he had was supposed to be moved by his friend, Hodgson, who kind of started this whole thing, and then his, his brother, Ryan Card. . . .
I did speak with him yesterday. Card . . . stated that, you know, he wasn't going to come to drill. And I was like, OK, that's, that's fine. He sounded angry, definitely angry at people, but made no specific threats, like, "I'm going to come there and shoot if nobody" . . . Nothing like that. . . .
And I just talked with my battalion commander and sergeant major. . . . They're like, as long as you can kind of—if you're out there, he's there. He can be uncooperative or whatever. But there's no sense in you guys pushing in. And the guy, we just wanted to check well-being, and if you can kind of tell he's there and alive, just kind of document it. . . .
Voice of: Sgt. Skolfield
AARON SKOLFIELD:
All right, well, this just kind of sucks. I appreciate you calling me back. And it gives me some answers and a little bit to work with.
JOHN TERHUNE:
During that conversation, Reamer seems to downplay the importance of actually confronting Card. And one thing that he does not discuss is just how imperative Card's own doctors believed it was that he not be allowed to be around weapons.
The urgency is not there. And that's the point that Skolfield has made over and over in the months since the shooting.
AARON SKOLFIELD:
I took their word that we could kind of let things simmer off a bit. I backed away. At this point, I'm kind of thinking it's kind of resolved. They don’t need this welfare check anymore.
NARRATOR:
Skolfield still wanted to verify that Card’s guns had been secured. He learned that the family hadn’t yet done so, but was told they would try.
The next day, he left for vacation.
NICOLE HERLING:
So September is when my dad went over to attempt to get his guns. And Robbie kicked him off his property. He says he got mad and told him to get off his property. Just go.
NARRATOR:
In the end, the guns were never removed.
AARON SKOLFIELD:
In the lens of hindsight, yes, I absolutely would have done things differently had I known what was going to happen in October. There wasn't anybody around that wouldn't. The law had a chink in its armor. It didn't allow me to go in and grab him without without breaking some law myself.
JOHN TERHUNE:
This wasn't one breakdown. This was a series of mistakes, a series of laws that were written in just such a way that it made it difficult to put them into use. A series of conversations that didn't happen, or didn't happen in the way that they needed to. And all of these put together put us on the track to Lewiston and allowed one really dangerous person to slip through the cracks and hurt a lot of people.
MEGAN VOZZELLA:
[Using ASL] Today we're burying Steve. It's his official burial in the cemetery today. It's going to be a hard day for all of us.
PREACHER:
Our brother Steven has gone to his rest and the peace of Christ.
MEGAN VOZZELLA:
[Using ASL] Sometimes, I can feel myself breaking down. And I need to remind myself to stay strong for my daughter.
PREACHER:
May the Lord now welcome him to the table of God's children in heaven.
MEGAN VOZZELLA:
[Using ASL] Now I have the sole responsibility of raising that child, and that's a challenging part for me.
Whose fault is it? Who do we blame? It makes me angry. He could have been stopped before he got worse.
NARRATOR:
In August 2024, the state commission issued its final report.
DAN WATHEN, Chair, Lewiston shooting commission:
The commission unanimously finds that there were several opportunities that, if taken, might have changed the course of these tragic events.
NARRATOR:
It came down particularly hard on Sgt. Skolfield and the decision not to invoke the yellow flag law.
DAN WATHEN:
The Sagadahoc County Sheriff's Office had sufficient probable cause to take Card into protective custody under Maine's yellow flag law.
NARRATOR:
A conclusion Skolfield, and his department’s leadership, continue to dispute.
JOHN TERHUNE:
Skolfield still to this day believes that he essentially did the right thing, did the job to the best of his ability with the information that he knew. I think in his view he wasn’t given the information he needed to make an informed decision. He wasn't given the legal tools that he would have needed.
JULIA ARENSTAM:
He felt that he was scapegoated, unfairly criticized more heavily than others. And he has threatened to sue the commission and to sue the governor for defamation as a result of all of that.
NARRATOR:
The report also faulted members of the Army Reserve.
DAN WATHEN:
The commission finds that the leaders of this Army Reserve unit failed to exercise their authority over him.
JOHN TERHUNE:
They bring the hammer down hard on the Army, as we had a feeling that they would be critical of the Army commanders in this report based on the way they handled those public hearings.
NARRATOR:
Card’s supervisors were blamed for not staying engaged with his follow-up care and not ensuring that his weapons were taken away.
Capt. Reamer is no longer leading Card’s reserve unit; he testified his time had come to cycle out of the position. The Army has disciplined three reserve officers for dereliction of duty, but would not identify who they are.
Despite singling out the Army Reserve and law enforcement, the commission largely did not critique the roles of the hospitals or mental health care providers, or any larger institutional or legal breakdowns.
JOHN TERHUNE:
You found that the hospital took the appropriate steps? Or were there alternative systemic failures here?
DAN WATHEN:
We set forth the facts that we determined them to be, and they're in the report, and I let the report speak for itself.
NARRATOR:
In an interview, the commission chair continued to defend the focus of the report.
SUSAN SHARON:
Do you think that you were as hard on Four Winds as you were on some other failings, in terms of law enforcement and the Army Reserve?
DAN WATHEN:
Well, I think we reported the facts in all instances, and there wasn't an effort to blame or to punish anyone. And we had no authority to discipline, to recommend anything or to draw any recommendations from it. Our authority was strictly to find the facts, and we did.
NARRATOR:
Maine’s Gov. Janet Mills, who convened the commission, stood by the report’s conclusions.
GOV. JANET MILLS (D):
Well, I think the commission addresses the shortcomings in the particular law enforcement person, with people who are involved in responding to Mr. Card's danger signals. And that's sad. That is a tragic neglect on their part. Not understanding, not implementing the law on the books.
STEVE MISTLER:
Reamer and Skolfield are arguably cogs in a bigger machine. Why are they singled out when in many instances they were part of a larger system?
JANET MILLS:
Well, I think the report, the commission, which I think worked very diligently and professionally, looked at every aspect of what was known, who knew it, when they knew it, whether the information was shared or not shared. Whether you talk about systems, I mean—I can't say there were systems failures. There were individual failures, and that's what the commission observed.
NARRATOR:
Since the shooting there have been calls for a stronger “red flag” gun law like in other states. The governor has resisted that, but signed new legislation to change the existing yellow flag law.
STEVE MISTLER:
These changes are designed to give them a little more latitude to take somebody into protective custody. But there hasn't been a wholesale reassessment of Maine's gun culture, its policy towards firearms. It's almost as if Lewiston didn't change those things.
There were enough individual failures or missteps or choices that's allowed people to assign blame to individuals as opposed to evaluating whether the system or culture that we're operating under is keeping us safe. And I feel like that's human nature. Once you've found somebody to blame, you just, you sort of [wipes hands], and that's it.
NARRATOR:
The day the commission’s report was released, families of the victims held their own press conference.
MEGAN VOZZELLA:
[Speaking through interpreter] The healing process is complex. We've gone through a lot of broken pieces. It's like we're walking through the shards one step at a time, one day at a time.
BEN GIDEON, Attorney:
From our perspective, as the attorneys representing the families affected by this mass shooting, it's really quite simple. Diagnosed psychoses plus possession of numerous assault weapons requires action.
TRAVIS BRENNAN, Attorney:
And now comes the time for accountability. And that accountability is important to ensure that something like this never happens again, in this community or anywhere else.
NARRATOR:
The families now say they intend to sue the Department of Defense, the Army and Keller Hospital.
Robert Card’s family is also searching for accountability and answers. They’ve pointed to his years as a grenade trainer in the Army and injuries to his brain discovered by Boston University's special CTE center.
Dr. Ann McKee runs the center.
ANN McKEE, Director, BU ADRC & CTE Center:
In Mr. Card's brain, what we saw was interface astrogliosis, which is a type of scarring, an inflammation of the brain that is has been found after blast injury, but also has been found in contact sport athletes.
What we knew from the clinicians who went back and talked to the family was that he had been exposed to grenade explosions repetitively. Though knowing that he had a very substantial exposure to these grenade explosions, we thought it was most likely that his traumatic brain injury was was secondary to that exposure.
NARRATOR:
The Army, however, offered a different theory. It said Card had only sustained “relatively minor” exposure to blasts, and it suggested his brain injury could have been related to a fall from a roof in 2008 in which he broke his neck.
ANN McKEE:
So we've never seen the type of brain injury, the brain damage that we found in Robert Card after a single event such as a fall, a single fall. Now, could that single injury have made the other injury worse? It's possible that it added to it, but as a single event, it doesn't explain the changes we found under the microscope.
NARRATOR:
Nevertheless, Dr. McKee said it is impossible to know the role of the brain injury in Card’s rampage.
ANN McKEE:
Everybody wants A to cause B, right? It's just too simple. When you say, "Did that brain injury cause him to kill 18 people?" Well, I can't say that. You know, you can't. It probably contributed to the story. But how much it contributed, that I don't know.
We need to learn more about exposures in the military, not just in combat, but in training and exercises. These are injuries that we haven't paid attention to for hundreds of years. And now we're learning they can have disastrous effects.
NARRATOR:
After Dr. McKee’s findings were made public, the Pentagon announced they were issuing new guidelines on blast exposure and said they were expanding cognitive testing to monitor service members’ brain health.
NICOLE HERLING:
What I found interesting about this family is that she—
I want to make sure that there’s accountability; I want to see that happen. And my question is, what the hell are we going to do for the people that have traumatic brain injuries today? What are we going to do for their families who are experiencing it today?
They need to show that they’re making these changes, and it needs to be transparent to the families who’ve been affected by brain injuries.
FEMALE RED CROSS VOLUNTEER:
Welcome. Can I offer you some tissues?
MEMORIAL SERVICE GUEST:
Thank you.
FEMALE RED CROSS VOLUNTEER:
You're welcome. I have plenty. Would you like more?
MEMORIAL SERVICE GUEST:
No. I'm good. Thank you, though.
FEMALE RED CROSS VOLUNTEER:
How about a teddy bear?
MEMORIAL SERVICE GUEST:
Sure.
SUSAN SHARON:
Today is important because it's the one-year anniversary since the shootings happened. I think it's a chance to show that the community still is in processing grief, but they are moving forward and standing up with each other.
MEMORIAL SERVICE SPEAKER 1:
We come together to reflect on the horror we experienced that night. To pay respect to the 18 lives taken from us. We honor their spirit, their legacy, and remember the impact they had and continue to have on our lives today.
DESTINY JOHNSON:
It took me a couple of times to get used to the gunshot. I never knew how to use one before. And I’m focused on how far away Robert Card was from our table. So I'm kind of learning the distance to try to shoot that far away—at least minimum 20 feet.
I carry it most of the time. I always feel safer now with the gun.
MEMORIAL SERVICE SPEAKER 2 :
Healing happens when we cry with each other during times of loss.
SUSAN SHARON:
The people who survived the shootings, they do not speak with one voice around gun legislation. So a lot of them are saying what we need is more mental health treatment.
MEMORIAL SERVICE SPEAKER 3 :
If you lost a loved one on Oct. 25, please stand and be recognized.
SUSAN SHARON:
Robert Card is still ultimately the person who's responsible for the ripple tragedy through this community. With all the shortcomings of the people who didn't take action or who miscommunicated their action, it ended up being left to the people who were at those two scenes, at Schemengees and at the bowling alley. The courage that those people displayed in the most horrific moments are just remarkable. And it's something you'll never forget.
